Intro: What is a lie? An abomination to God and a very present help in a time of trouble. Most people are not planning evil. The real evil is not that evil happens but that we often think evil is necessary.
I. The Context of the Sermon on the Mount:
A. The Call to Discipleship: Admiring Jesus vs. Following Jesus
1. Must not separate teaching from teacher. (reduce to principle)
2. The Sermon on the Mount in Matt. 5–7 is inconsistent at best and completely unintelligible at worse, if it is isolated from its context within Matthew’s gospel.
B. How are we to read the SOTM?
1. A New Law assumption: this way of understanding would be the smallest “sect” but viewed in Branches of the Mennonites, Anabaptist, and some Pentecostal Holiness circles. Problem with this is it is inconsistent with the rest of the New Testament about law and grace, the gospel and what Christ has accomplished on the cross. It falls into the temptation Paul warned us about: that having started by the Spirit, we try to be perfected by the flesh.
2. To prove one’s guilt assumption: The most common is that the sermon was never intended by Jesus to be observed or followed by his disciples, but only a way of showing them their sin. Jewish people didn’t need help with that. The Torah already did that. Makes Jesus conclusion to the sermon unintelligible. Building your house on rock or sand is clearly about practicing what Jesus has said. He intends his hearers to practice what he has said.
3. An Uncommon Ideal: many protestants think the sermon should be what we are aiming at but have little hope of hitting. There is certainly know intention of becoming Sermon on the Mount kinds of people. There is no church that has as it’s expressed vision to become people who keep the sermon on the mount.
C. Understanding how Jesus teaches.
1. JUG to MUG model. Turns the sermon on the mount into the seminar at the Sheraton.
2. Not everyone has parchment or quill. Not everyone is literate. So Jesus uses the generalized assumptions of his day as examples of how the kingdom of God is different.
3. Teaching for impact. Works such as where you were on 9/11, or OKC bombing, or JFK assassination. Gives a parable that generalized assumption of his day would not work.
“What Jesus is saying in the sermon on the mount cannot be understood if we do not understand how Jesus teaches and cannot understand that without understanding some of the context of Jesus’ day.” Dallas Willard
4. Pharisee’s mistake was not wanting to keep the law, but being so preoccupied with the law that they long to be known as one keeping the law, that it lead to hypocrisy. Instead of becoming the kinds of people who naturally keep the law, they found ways to keep the law and their hearts remain untouched by the Spirit of the Law.
5. Jesus is addressing how our heart will eventually override our best intentions. Exceeding the righteousness of Pharisee’s is about moving from preoccupation with outward requirements and dealing with the issues of the heart that lead to the actions that violate the law.
“Actions do not emerge from nothing. Actions faithfully reveal our heart and we can know what it is in our hearts that lead to actions. At the level of ordinary human interactions the heart is not a mystery.” DW
6. What Jesus is doing at a high level through his teaching is important. He is not giving new law, he is expressing the Kingdom heart in which kingdom goodness would naturally flow from.
II. Jesus: The Fulfillment of the Law (5:17-20)
1. Jesus is not doing away with the law but has come to fulfilled it.
2. The law was given to Israel as a way of being the “light to the world.” Living according to it, they would be “good works” or “righteousness”.
3. Righteousness will exceed that of the Scribes and Pharisees. Righteousness is. Diakosunie in greek. Meaning that which makes some one good or inner goodness. True inner goodness. If we mistake this for “keeping the law” we miss Jesus point. The Pharisees are concerned with being legal to the law, not about being good. Legal is not the same thing as good.
4. Jesus is saying that the righteousness that the Law could not produce in the human heart, because of the weakness of the flesh as Paul would add, will be produced in His disciples who follow him. This “inner goodness.”
4. Now those who follow Christ the “righteousness” or “deep inner goodness” that the Law was thought to produce, but couldn’t due to the weakness of our flesh, Christ will do through the Holy Spirit. (Rom. 8:4)
5. A disciple of Jesus is someone who is with Him by the Spirit learning to do as He would by formed into the kinds of people who naturally do it.
III. The Antithesis: 5:21-48
A. Anger and Contempt: The Roots of Evil in the Heart (vs 21-26)
1. The first illustration of kingdom “righteousness/ goodness” is drawn from cases in which we are displeased with our “brother” and may be tempted to treat him with anger or contempt.
2. When one traces wrongdoing back to its roots in the human heart, we find that in the overwhelming number of cases it involves some form of anger.
3. Jesus first points out the inadequacy of the commandment not to murder as a guide to dealing with anger in relationships
B. What is Anger?
1. In its simplest form, anger is a spontaneous response that has a vital function in life. As such, it is not wrong. Indeed, anger is in its own right- apart from acting it out- is an injury to others. When I discover you are angry at me, I am already wounded. 2. It may evoke anger in return. Usually it does, precisely because your anger places a restraint on me. It crosses my will. Thus anger feeds on anger. The primary function of anger in life is to alert me to an obstruction to my will, and immediately raise alarm and resistance, before I even have time to think about it. But if that were all there was to anger, all would be well.
3. Some degree of malice is contained in every degree of anger. That is why it always hurts us when someone is angry at us. We seek to avoid making people angry unless there is an ulterior end to be gained by it.
4. Anger first arises spontaneously. But we can actively receive it and decide to indulge it, and we usually do. When a feeling becomes pervasive we call it “mood.” We have become an angry person in which any incident can evoke from us a torrent of rage that is kept in constant readiness.
C. Why would someone want to indulge anger?
1. We know it has negative effects on the body and relationships. Indulging in anger always has in it an element of self- righteousness and vanity. A person who has embraced anger, will be a person with a wounded ego.
2. Anger is a response to a perceived threat or injustice. The Problem is that we think it an injustice that we do not get our way. The only way to indulge anger over a period of time is self- righteousness.
3. Anger As Now Practiced: anger is now taught as necessary to oppose evil and injustice. Righteousness does not have to be intertwined with anger. One can be diligent for justice without indulging in anger. Being energized by anger is not the same thing as being energized by justice or what is right. *Parents who I said, “Try not to discipline in anger for it undermines the learning process.” So you want us to discipline in cold blood?” *currently political climate is one of anger. You are not serious if you are not angry. Really?
“What can be done in anger can be done better without it.”
IV. Then there is the evil twin: Contempt and it Is Worse
1. Contempt is a greater evil than anger and so is deserving of greater condemnation. Unlike innocent anger, at least, contempt is a kind studied degradation of another, and it also is more pervasive in life than anger. It is never justifiable or good. 2. Therefore Jesus tells us, “Whoever says ‘Raca’ to his brother shall stand condemned before the Sanhedrin.” (vs. 22)
3. In anger I want to hurt you. In contempt, I don’t care whether you are hurt or not, live or die. We can be angry at someone without denying their worth as a human being, but contempt makes it easer for us to hurt them and no longer see them as human.
4. We are much more explicit with a verbal arsenal loaded with contemptible terms, some sexual, racial, and other personally degrading. “You are dead to me.” Or “I would not pee on you if you were on fire.” The intent and the effect of contempt is always to exclude someone.
5. Contempt is the murder of someones dignity. In some societies both “high societies” and “low societies" contempt is a fine art. It is difficult to be in “good standing” with some if you are not practicing contempt towards the correct people.
6. To belong is a vital need based in the spiritual nature of the human being. Contempt spits on this need. Contempt does not have to be acted out to be evil and poisonous.
Contempt can grow so strong murder might have been more merciful.
V. Negation will not be enough.
A. Need positive action.
1. When I go to Miami, no one stops me in the airport and tells me what a great thing I did by not going to New York. I took the necessary steps and rest took care of itself.
2. Likewise, when I treasure those around me and see them as God’s creatures designed for His love and eternal purposes, I do not make an additional point to not hate them and calling them names.
3. On the other hand, trying to not go to New York is a poor strategy to get to Miami. Likewise, trying to not be wrongly angry and so is a poor strategy for treating people with love. We must learn this in discipleship to Jesus Christ.
4. Jesus gives two positive things we can do:
B. Make Reconciliation central to Worship:
1. The altar: leaving a holy moment of worship to be reconciled to his brother. What kind of character, habits, and life must one have
2. When a sacred and religious act is interrupted to reconcile with your brother religious ideology is shattered by love.
3. In the imperative to reconcile before sacrificing your offering- a deeply religious and holy act of worship- God has made it impossible to separate how we are doing with God from how we are doing with our brother. God desires reconciliation.
4. Now think about what quality of life and character must be in a person who routinely interrupts sacred rituals to pursue reconciliation with a fellow human being. What kind of thought life, feeling tones and moods, what habits of body and mind, what deliberate choices would you find in such person?
5. When answering these questions, you will have a vision of the true “righteousness that is beyond” that is at home in God’s kingdom of power and love.
C. The 2nd example is one who is your legal adversary.
1. Now how we treat adversaries is crucial. Jesus is not saying to give meet all their demands. In fact, he is not telling us to go to court or not go to court.
2. As Bonhoeffer pointed out in the Cost of Discipleship, “Jesus is not saying what we are to do but how we are to do it.” Court or no court, do it without hostility, anger, contempt and a merciless drive to win at all cost.
3. Standing in the goodness of the kingdom of God, we make responsible decisions in love, with assurance that how things turn out for us does not really matter. In the kingdom of God, nothing can happen to us that God cannot work out for our good.
4. You see, Jesus makes it impossible to follow him and not trust in the goodness of God’s activity in then ordinary affairs of human life. To walk with Jesus in the kingdom of God is a walk of faith and trust in the goodness of God.
Conclusion:
1. We can see through these two illustrations that the kingdom goodness placed side-by-side with the mere goodness of not murdering makes the Old law look empty in contrast.
2. If we made laws of these illustrations and followed them, would that make us right towards our brothers and sisters. Not at all. We could do these things and yet find many other ways to hate, hurt and exclude our neighbor. We would miss the whole point!
3. Wherever you sense conviction or the Holy Spirit’s leading you further into the sermon on the mount, listen and obey! We are training in the life in the kingdom of God.
GP2RL: Is there someone you need to forgive or ask for forgiveness? Ask Jesus for the courage to make reconciliation an act of worship!
